Buddy Thomas: New playoff system will affect Big 3, SCC

There was a lot of reaction to the recent column concerning the newly-adopted high school playoff system which comes into effect next season.

Buddy Thomas

There was a lot of reaction to the recent column concerning the newly-adopted high school playoff system which comes into effect next season.

Here are two key questions that have been asked:

Q: I love going to the New Bedford-Durfee Thanksgiving Day football game and I plan to keep going. But what's the hangup over playing a second game and letting that one count towards qualifying for the playoffs? I remember reading that those two schools used to play twice in the same season way back when. Why not now?

A: The teams used to play twice before and around the war years in the 1940s, but that was mostly out of necessity (travel and scheduling restrictions). The teams also added a second game in 1981 because then athletic directors Dick Ponte (New Bedford) and Skip Karam (Durfee) thought a second game would help feed their respective school athletic budgets. The additional game was played on Oct. 3 and New Bedford won, 14-0. But if the expected monetary boost lived up to expectations, it didn't lead to a carryover as the teams have met strictly on a Thanksgiving Day basis ever since. New Bedford athletic director Mike Correia has rejected any proposal to move the game or play a second one because he strongly opposes "devaluing" one of the state's oldest Thanksgiving Day football traditions. The athletic directors of the Big 3 schools (New Bedford, Durfee and Brockton) are scheduled to meet today (Thursday) to discuss the issue.

Q: It's a tough call. I like the idea of having a state-wide playoff system, but I also happen to follow a school in the South Coast Conference and how can you crown a true champion in seven weeks (before the state-wide playoffs begin) when that conference champion isn't usually decided until after the Thanksgiving Day games, which come at the end of the season? Winning the SCC almost always comes down to who wins those Thanksgiving Day games. Wareham and Bourne, Apponequet and Old Rochester and Dighton-Rehoboth and Seekonk. Wow! At least two of those three Thanksgiving Day games usually have a bearing on who wins the conference. It's a real dilemma.

A: As it stands now it's a dilemma for any league with nine or more teams because any league that big can't possibly crown a champion by playing a full schedule in the allotted seven-week period the new playoff system demands. But, since the majority of MIAA members voted in favor of the playoff system, something has to give.Big or bigger leagues that haven't already done so, are splitting into two divisions of five or more teams which assures multiple playoff (at least two and possibly more) berths. There has also been talk of merging leagues just for the football season. The Big 3 and the Old Colony League (Dartmouth, Barnstable and Bridgewater-Raynham) is the latest example. I'm as appreciative of the SCC (in existence since 1985) as anyone but, with the adoption of the new playoff system in which the regular season must end after seven weeks, the SCC as we once knew it is dead — at least in football.

With that in mind, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea if the South Coast Conference and Eastern Athletic Conference think about partnering up for a new football league. In one division, you could have Apponequet, Dighton-Rehoboth, GNB Voc-Tech, Wareham, Bishop Feehan, Somerset-Berkley and Martha's Vineyard while the other division would include Bourne, Case, Fairhaven, Old Rochester, Seekonk, Bishop Stang and Coyle-Cassidy. With seven schools in each division, there would be time to crown legitimate division champions within the seven-week time frame and still preserve those traditional Thanksgiving Day matchups without affecting the division races since holiday-game opponents would be in opposite divisions — Apponequet/Old Rochester, Wareham/Bourne, D-R/Seekonk, Case/Somerset-Berkley and Bishop Stang/Bishop Feehan. Coyle-Cassidy, GNB Voc-Tech and Fairhaven play rivals from other leagues and Martha's Vineyard doesn't play on Thanksgiving. It's not perfect but neither is the newly-adopted playoff system.

Buddy Thomas' column appears weekly in The Standard-Times.

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